The Much-Needed Biological Insights on Nationalism

One can admit that gene theft works and yet claim that gene theft is dishonorable, immoral, contrary to the will of God, etc. One might claim that gene theft has long-term disadvantages. One might even claim that gene theft is moral for some ethnies but not moral for others.

I don’t particularly think that the white race stands to benefit from gene theft. However, I think it is a real sociobiological issue that deserves scientific attention.

So, “inviting” intermarriage from other ethnies comes down to obtaining their genes, in order to serve the long-term survivability of the whites, right?

For the moment, I will assume that this can be kept under control and it would be possible to admit new genes without losing white genes.

I think such a gene pool would be too large to be called a “nation” in any reasonable sense. White Americans could still be a nation, but the white gene pool would not be a nation.

I have a lot of science that I need to catch up on. I am a staunch enthusiast of traditional white culture – Kipling and Revilo Oliver and so on – but at the moment, I think I need to sacrifice my enjoyment of white culture to build up my understanding of white genetics.

Possibly the first step would be a detailed refutation of “The Race Question” by Ashley Montagu.

A. Relatedness is the most real thing in the world: mother, father, baby.

Q. But, don’t different societies have different rules about who is considered to be related to whom?

A. Yes. Indeed, every culture comes up with a way to deal with the exponential unwieldiness of family trees.

For many purposes of daily life, you have too many relatives. The sheer numbers of ancestors, distant cousins, and potential descendents you have expand out beyond any manageable boundaries. The amount of relatives you’ll send a Christmas card to might be larger than the number you’ll volunteer to cook Thanksgiving dinner for, but, still, there’s got to be an end to everything.

Many cultures have devised rules to limit who counts as a relative for the purposes of, say, inheritance. English aristocratic families didn’t want their land holdings divided up into unimpressive and inefficient parcels, so they followed the rule of primogeniture, passing the claim to be of noble blood down through the first-born son, with latter-borns falling out of the aristocracy within two generations. For instance, Mr. Winston Churchill was the first-born son of Lord Randolph Churchill, who was the second-born son of the Duke of Marlborough. That seems awfully aristocratic to us plebian Americans, but by English law, he wasn’t a peer because his father wasn’t first-born. And thus, to Winston’s political benefit, his parliamentary career was spent in the House of Commons rather than the House of Lords.

The Chinese treated sons more equitably, but almost completely ignored daughters.

In contrast to these attempts to nominally define down the putative number of relations, many Middle Eastern cultures have come up with an actual biological solution (of sorts) to reduce the number of relatives: cousin marriage. In Iraq, half of all married couples are first or second cousins.

Q. Why?

A. One reason is this: If you marry your daughter off to your brother’s son, then your grandchildren/heirs will also be your brother’s grandchildren/heirs. So, there is less cause for strife among brothers. Cousin marriage helps make family loyalties especially strong in Iraq, to the detriment of national loyalties.

Q. Do you ever want more relatives?

A. For many political struggles, the more the merrier.

Ibn Saud, who founded Saudi Arabia in the 1920s, consolidated his victory over other desert chieftains by marrying 22 women, typically the daughters of his former rivals. Thus, today’s vast Saudi ruling family represents the intermixing of the tribes, which has helped it survive in power for 80 years.

On the other hand, the wealthy Syrian Jews of Brooklyn, with few political threats hanging over them here in America, don’t need blood relations with other power centers, so the community fiercely ostracizes anyone who marries outside it.

Or, political entrepreneurs can attempt to widen or narrow their followers’ working definition of who their relatives are by rhetorical means. For example, in the 1960s, black leaders encouraged African-Americans to call each other “brother” and “sister” to build solidarity.

Q. In America, wasn’t there a “one-drop rule” for determining if one is a minority?

A. For blacks, yes: for American Indians, no. Herbert Hoover’s VP, Charles Curtis, was famous for being 1/8th Kaw Indian. Being a little bit Indian added glamour to his image.

Indian nations have the right to set ancestry minimums (generally, at least 1/4th) required for legal membership in the tribe, and they often police membership with a vengeance.

Q. Isn’t all this outdated?

A. Both blacks and Indians are standing by the traditional definitions, because it’s in their interests.

Ever since Congress allowed Indian nations to each own one casino in the late 1980s, many tribes have been expelling racially marginal members to increase the slice of the pie for the more pure-blooded remainder. That’s because the main benefit of belonging to a tribe—the rake-off from a single casino—is finite.

In contrast, black and Hispanic organizations have backed broad, inclusive definitions of who is black or Hispanic because the rake-off from being black or Hispanic—affirmative action quotas—is indefinite in magnitude. The larger the percentage of the population, the larger the quota, and the larger the number of voters who are beneficiaries and thus supporters.

Q. So cultures change their definitions of who deserves to be a relative?

A. Not just cultures, but individuals change their definitions to fit their needs at the moment.

For example, right before the Battle of Agincourt, King Henry V needed all the loyal relatives, real or exaggerated, he could get, so Shakespeare has him address the English army:

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother”.

On the other hand, once the bloodshed was over, King Henry probably wasn’t inclined to let his old yeomen archers come over and hang around the palace whenever they liked as if they were his actual brothers.

Q. So, leaders can persuade their followers to see themselves as more or less closely related?

A. Yes, but the more they follow existing genealogical fault lines, the more likely they are to succeed.

Q. What’s an ethnic group?

A. The Census Bureau draws a sharp distinction between race and ethnicity, stating that individuals of Hispanic ethnicity can be of any race. The way the federal government uses the terms can be formalized like this:

A racial group is a partly inbred extended biological family.

An ethnic group is one defined by shared traits that are often passed down within biological families—e.g., language, surname, religion, cuisine, accent, self-identification, historical or mythological heroes, musical styles, etc.—but that don’t require genetic relatedness.
Q. Can you give an example?

A. The difference is perhaps easiest to see with adopted children. For example, if, say, an Armenian baby is adopted by Icelanders, his ethnicity would be Icelandic, at least until he became a teen and decided to rebel against his parents by searching out and espousing his Armenian heritage. But racially, he’d always have been Armenian.

Q. If races exist, doesn’t that mean one race has to be the supreme Master Race? And that would be awful!

A. Indeed it would, but no race is going to be best at everything – any more than one region could be the supreme master region for all human purposes.

For example, a mountaintop is a stirring place to put a Presidential Library. But if you want to break the land speed record in your rocket car, it’s definitely inferior to the Bonneville Salt Flats.